A California science author has taken legal action against NASA, claiming the agency is failing to investigate the mysterious object that appeared in front of the Opportunity rover on Mars last month.
Mars doughnut
One man believes this is a mushroom (click to enlarge)
"The refusal to take close up photos from various …

COMMENTS

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Reg Commentard surely?

He sounds like the poster boy El Reg Commentard - skim the article, post a rant without reviewing the facts, then go run with the wolves or waddle with the penguins (pick your preference) down to the local pub.

Re: If you look carefully....

Re: If you look carefully....

Re: If you look carefully....

Naw, it was amanfrommars. He just hires Mayans as advisors and a couple of Aztecs here and there. As well as Giorgio Tsoukalos' hair (y'know "because Aliens" or as me and my wife refer to him, Mr. "Exatrestrial").

But yeah, he runs a psychedelic paving company in Kasei Valles, didn't you know?

Backfiring Logic

The biggest problem with any conspiracy is that those who endorse the conspiracy can never be satisfied with evidence showing they are wrong. Anything provided to them will not be satisfactory. Since that's the case, you're a lot better off spending your money on hookers and cocaine than trying to obtain evidence which you cannot believe.

The most disturbing aspect of conspiracy theories is that in order to 'believe' in them you have to question your perception of reality. It happens, every single time, even if the people impacted don't realize it is happening. The processes required to disengage your natural instincts for even basic logic and observation are not the signs of a healthy mind. To be unsure, or uncommitted is one thing, but to refuse to acknowledge evidence disproving your theory is truly unbalanced insanity.

On the upside, most hardcore loons like this guy can't get everything together long enough to acquire the money and resources that would let them do serious harm because of their skewed view on things. So loons are OK, even if kind of dumb, and wealthy people are OK, even if kind of dumb. But a wealthy loon is really not OK.

Re: Backfiring Logic

Correct. Conspiracy is impossible. Humans never conspire, and anyone who proposes otherwise is insane. I mean look at this guy!!! HAHHAHAHhahahahAHAHAHAHhhHahahahahAHAHahahdaeiewjf'arwef'ermgaergaknre'kag

Clearly all this demonstrates that we should never ask questions about anything, ever.

Re: Backfiring Logic

Well, you make a very valid point about the definition of a conspiracy. I know what conspiracy really means, but we're not allowed to share our knowledge with those who are not initiated.

But seriously, I'm aware conspiracies are real. The issue is that the data required to validate/falsify a conspiracy can't be trusted. The people conspiring against you have operatives everywhere you know.

The issue of overvaluation of self is generally very evident in conspiracies. Even if there were a conspiracy at the highest levels, what makes a person think they would be affected by a conspiracy? The overwhelming majority of conspiracy theories would have absolutely zero impact on 99.9999987% of the population if proven true. As a rule, individuals see themselves far more important than they really are.

And lastly, everything about conspiracy theories is done in a way that is worst practice in science, engineering or even general problem solving. They start at conclusions and work backward to make them fit into a fairly wonky view of reality. You don't need any information if you're going about it that way. Just say whatever you like. Hell, even people who agree on the existence of a given conspiracy can't agree among themselves what the effects of the conspiracy are.

So we don't know what effects a conspiracy has, nor the mechanisms that make it work nor if it even matters. Even from a common sense standpoint it doesn't make sense to go digging but not actually know what you're digging for. From a business standpoint and an engineering standpoint you ignore issues like that because you're only guessing and doing yourself harm is just as, if not more, likely than finding answers. Even if you did find answers you wouldn't recognize them if you found them because preconceived notions prevent you from seeing what's actually happening.

Re: Backfiring Logic

'Foucalt's Pendulum' by Umberto Eco is an excellent treatise on conspiracy theorists and their desire to believe, presented in the form of a thriller. It's very readable, if a bit dense at times, and has an overarching structure that prevents the fatigue one can feel after successive plot twists a la Robert Anton Wilson's 'Schrodinger Cat Trilogy'.

However, you don't need to have read it to consider Dan Brown a prick.

Re: Backfiring Logic

I wrote a paper in university on using 'alternative viewpoints', found in the writings of any given period in time, to construct a framework for examination of that period that included viewpoints that generally aren't reflected in formal histories and political texts of that time. Kind of a 'thinking persons' timeline to help seperate the influences of politics, economy and academic(ish) philosophies so that events could be assessed without the insane bias generally reflected in 'official' histories. Society isn't a vacuum kind of thing. My professor hated it. Mostly, I think, because if my work was valid it undermined the neat little cause/effect views of history people like to make for themselves.

Anyway, works by RAW, Douglas Adams, Oscar Wilde and the Marx brothers featured heavily in the justifications I gave for attempting to 'rewrite history'. RAW is the only person I've ever encountered who could induce motion sickness via text :)

Re: Backfiring Logic

Another unifying feature of conspiracy theories is the lack of motive ascribed to the conspirators. For example 9/11 truthers will talk until they're blue in the face defending their interpretations of 'evidence' but never even approach the motive problem - namely, if you wanted to scare people into going to war, why blow up buildings and go to phenomenal cost and risk to pretend that planes did it when the goal would be accomplished just as effectively by just blowing them up to begin with?

And, of course, in this case, what possible motivation would NASA have to 'cover up' some fabulous fungus, when the whole damn reason the rovers were sent to mars was to look for exactly that kind of thing?

I've never gotten the chance to spin a real conspiracy nut up to high RPM on technical issues and then see what his response to the motve question is, but hopefully one day...

Re: Backfiring Logic

Oh come on. Everyone knows Elvis is living on one of Jupiter's moons and only occasionally visits Mars or Las Vegas. The cold is keeping him fresh so he doesn't die of old age.

On a more serious note, yes conspiracies do happen, even in the modern world. The problem I have with a lot of popular conspiracy theories would require the US government to be far more competent than they actually are. Plus NASA really has nothing to hide (unless you think little green men who've cracked warp speed are interested in a bunch of hairless apes).

Running with the wolves, eh?

"Any intelligent adult, adolescent, child, chimpanzee, monkey, dog, or rodent with even a modicum of curiosity, would approach, investigate and closely examine a bowl-shaped structure which appears just a few feet in front of them"

Just curious.

Re: Just curious.

Lost in the bowels of his website:

"Dr. Joseph obtained his Ph.D. from UHS/The Chicago Medical School, and completed his training at the VAMC/Yale University Medical School Seizure Unit, Department of Neurology, Neuropsychology Section. Joseph completed the Ph.D. program, including his Ph.D. dissertation in two years, and by graduation had more scientific publications than most of the faculty."

http://brainmind.com/publications.html (search for A VERY BRIEF BIOGRAHICAL RESEARCH NOTE [it's like a billion lines down])

"Lost in the bowels of his website:"

It conforms to my 'mentalists put it all on one page' theory.

You see it on quack websites claiming the latest diet with bogus references (e.g. GM diet which was NEVER done by GM), conspiracy theorists like David Ike's (who sadly has went more commercial and regular in his website design now), people complaining about a company for some reason (which reading confirms is that basically they didn't know how to treat someone who is clearly mental), etc

It's weird how they all conform to the 'I NEED to stuff everything on one single massive page' web design.

But it does mean, when I'm looking for info on something it's a great way of immediately realising what I'm looking at is the work of a mentalist, so saves time.,

Re: Lost in the bowels of his website:

Re: Just curious.

> Dr. Joseph obtained his Ph.D. from UHS/The Chicago Medical School, and completed his training at the VAMC/Yale University Medical School Seizure Unit, Department of Neurology, Neuropsychology Section. Joseph completed the Ph.D. program, including his Ph.D. dissertation in two years, and by graduation had more scientific publications than most of the faculty

This could just be a tragically confused interpretation of a stay in a mental hospital after a seizure and brain injury...

Crackpot (and one without standing)

I read the petition, and based on the language and writing, I'd have to say the author is a genuine, bona-fide, died-in-the-wool crackpot. [Though rather a low-level one apparently: he was denied a Wikipedia page as either a "real" scientist or as a crackpot because he wasn't genuinely famous.]

General crackpottedness aside, I fail to understand why he thinks he has standing. About 95% of the section of the petition that's supposed to explain the petitioner's standing is a list of his publications and supposed qualifications as an expert in astrobiology (or something like that). However, "standing" doesn't have anything to do with his qualifications as an expert. "Standing" is about showing that you've been more-or-less directly harmed and that the remedy you're seeking will compensate you for that harm and stop you from being harmed further.

When it comes to the actual question of his standing, the petitioner falls back on the old "I'm a taxpayer and <somebody> is spending my tax money in a way that I don't like." That's referred to as "taxpayer standing", and the US Supreme Court says it's not a valid argument unless the plaintiff is claiming that the taxes are being levied and spent in a manner that exceeds the authority granted to <somebody> to do so under the constitution.

Even though it was definitively tossed out by the Supreme Court in 1923, crackpots never tire of the "taxpayer standing" gambit...

Re: Crackpot (and one without standing)

My take as well. I loved the bit:

Petitioner has no other alternative avenues of relief available other than mandamus.

All I could think was, relief from what? Being a taxpayer? Hell, the judge should find in his favor and award him monetary relief to reimburse his portion of NASA's budged in pennies, all twenty dollars of it and have him pay for the armored truck to deliver it from D.C. in order to provide relief to the other taxpayers since he is being such a pillock.

Evidence?

If he has provided NASA with evidence that the object is organic, how did he come by this evidence? More importantly why does he want NASA to investigate the object if he clearly has the means to investigate it himself?

Re: Evidence?

Rule #1 of proving any conspiracy theory is to provide only carefully screened evidence, gathered from secret sources and packaged in a way so that only those in on the conspiracy can recognize the information for what it really is. It's all very complicated you see. Protecting innocent bystanders and letting those leading the conspiracy know that you know is a fine line to walk.

Re: Evidence?

The Pattern

I't's good to know that I'm not the only one seeing a pattern develop. The pattern is that when NASA comes across something OBVIOUSLY unusual, curious or unexpected, they literally turn away from it every time. NASA needs to investigate, not run from, interesting finds!

Re: The Pattern

Re: The Pattern

"I't's good to know that I'm not the only one seeing a pattern develop."

This post, yes, this one, is one of those fekking posts that I look at and can't work out if the poster is joking or not. Every logic circuit in my brain is screaming "it's a joke! it's a joke!", but the little nagging voice from just over my shoulder is quietly saying "no, it's not a joke, they're being completely serious"...

Re: The Pattern

I can see how people might think NASA is hiding information from us. I really can, don't know why they would hide it, but I can see people believing NASA is in on fooling us all.

But it's horribly bad practice to jump to the most complex reasons before eliminating simpler reasons. I'll give you a real world example, stick with me, the lead in is crucial:

Here where I work, we do quite a bit of sintering and have a bit of a specialty focus on designing and producing sintered mixing screws and assemblies in complex shapes for use in extremely hostile industrial environments. Like melt your face off and kill lots of people if something goes wrong hostile, right.

To prevent melted faces, we developed a testing process where we recreate the hostile environment (scaled down) and expose test output to every possible variable that it could encounter and during the process, which can take many weeks, we make many thousands of scans of the test article with our scanning electron microscope.

To aid in analysis we'll expose the test article to many different chemicals that cause different materials in the test article to appear as different colors after the computer has processed the scans. Effectively we're making a movie our engineers will analyze in zillions of different ways to identify potential for melted faces.

I'm wrapping up here, this is the important part. If you look at the 'movie' long enough, in enough ways, or just get lucky, you're going to see all sorts of weird shit.

We've had Jesus many times, animal shapes, penis shapes, everything. Only once was something unexplainable, at first. One of our engineers has one of those South American names that's got lots of parts, but his initials are DALE so we call him DALE or DALE 3000 if he's drunk. Anyway, the letters DALE started showing up in some scans. We thought it was a joke, but DALE is quite superstitious, he was scared. We had angered God and such.

Over 10 hours later someone noticed the font in the scans is proprietary to our internal ops and God certainly wouldn't be infringing on our trademarked property. The cause was that the metallic components of the ink on our ID badges had become magnetized on DALE's badge and had picked up steel 'powder' used in the sintering process. When DALE was operating the scanner his badge had been in front of the viewport (which should have been closed anyway) but because the powder on the badge was what was used in the piece under observation the computer assumed it was supposed to be there. Haha, hilarious right?

Funny story aside, my point was that if I showed an outsider the 'movies' from our lab it would be unnerving to most people that weren't stoned. It's weird and it doesn't look like what people think it should look like (how the know what it should look like is still a mystery. But my engineers, who have been looking at these things for years see the images for what they really are. To a superstitious Catholic with no knowledge, Jesus is a full time staffer here. But to my engineers Jesus's outstretched arms are the threads of the mixing screw and his head and body are just the main shaft which is ovoid in shape and looks vaguely Human shaped.

So what you see as 'weird, crazy discovery' worthy of coverup, is much more likely to be a reflection of your lack of expertise in analyzing the environment. I know you don't have the expertise, but if you jump to conclusions you'll never have answers either...

Re: The Pattern

Don Jefe, you've earned my respect with that post. It ought to be printed, framed, and hung on walls in peoples' houses so they can read it often enough to understand it. I am convinced that if we could just manage to get most people over that hump of realizing that complex results have simple causes, and - well, basically realizing what you said, that the world would rapidly become a much better place.

There's a part of me that thinks we ought to drop a huge chunk of primary education and replace it with a great whacking section of time where everyone is devoted entirely to learning *how to learn* and learning *how to interpret* - things like correlation/causation, unfounded logical leaps (eg, antivaxxers going, 'Substance A is bad, Substance A is in a vaccine; vaccine is therefore bad'), etc. Dollars to donuts just doing that would have knock-on effects that would make life better for hundreds of millions within a few decades...